The pretty image of a waning crescent Moon was taken just after midnight on the 18th January 2017. With this phase you can see many of the lunar oceans and seas on the surface of the Moon.

To the lower left on the terminator line is the Sea of Serenity, which is quite dark and prominent. To the bottom of the Sea of Serenity you can see two mountainous areas know as the Apennines Mountains (Montes) and Caucasus Montes. The two mountain chains are separated by a mere 50kms, and this is where the area know as the Sea of Rains (Mare Imbrium) begins, then the huge area known as the Ocean of Storms (Oceanus Procellarum) wraps all around the lower right area of the Moon.

Before the use of telescopes, these areas on the lunar surface were believed to be seas and oceans because from Earth they looked large and dark and it was just natural for the astronomers to think that they were large bodies of water. But we now better now because the lunar surface is as dry as a bone!

To the top right you can see the very heavily cratered southern area of the lunar surface with the crater Tycho still quite prominent with its long ejected ray system.

Images was taken with a 127mm APO refractor telescope at prime focus, I used 10 images and stacked them into Registax6, exposure times were 1/400th second and ISO 400.